A very occasional photographic miscellany. If you found this you got here by accident.
Clicking on any of the photographs should take you somewhere else. Unfortunately the 'somewhere else' is most likely to be another viewing of the same photograph you just clicked but on a different web page. Good here isn't it?

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Good evening. Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly Burger acts. The victims were in cafes, or in restaurants; secretaries, businessmen and women, military and federal workers; moms and dads, friends and neighbors. Thousands of lives were suddenly changed by evil, despicable acts of takeaway food.

A great people has been moved to defend a great City. Burger attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of Norwich. These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of Norwich's resolve.

Norwich was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in Norfolk. And no one will keep that light from shining.

Today, our City saw evil, the very worst of takeaways. And we responded with the best of Norfolk -- with the daring of our rescue workers, with the caring for strangers and neighbours who came to give blood and help in any way they could.

Immediately following the first attack, I implemented our City's emergency response plans. Our council is powerful, and it's prepared. Our emergency teams are working in Thorpe Hamlet, Lakenham and Catton to help with local rescue efforts.

Our first priority is to get help to those who have been injured, and to take every precaution to protect our citizens at home and around the County from further attacks.

I appreciate so very much the members of the council who have joined me in strongly condemning these attacks. And on behalf of the people of Norwich, I thank the many Norfolk County leaders who have called to offer their condolences and assistance.

The City and our friends and allies join with all those who want peace and security in Norfolk, and we stand together to win the war against burgers. Tonight, I ask for your prayers for all those who grieve, for the children whose worlds have been shattered, for all whose sense of safety and security has been threatened. And I pray they will be comforted by a power greater than any of us, spoken through the ages in Leviticus 19:19: "Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee."

This is a day when all Citizens of Norwich from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace. None of us will ever forget this day. Yet, we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in Norfolk.

Monday, January 16, 2006

It seems to me that once upon a time, before the war against terrorism was declared, eight year olds made simple things with Lego and played innocent games. Yesterday my son made this; a machine, he proudly told me, for brainwashing Action Man.

Friday, January 13, 2006

Somewhere hidden in this picture of a rock and sweet stall on Great Yarmouth Market are 5 little titties. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to find them. This web page will explode in 30 seconds.

He also, you will note, sells warm Tip Top drinks whose existance are a continual source of puzzlement to me. Who buys them and why? Why are they never sold from a chill cabinet? How can a million shops get away with selling luke warm, coloured water? All that was missing from his stall was Panda Pops .

Monday, January 09, 2006

Another Irish tin: this one, from the 1950s I think, bizarely labelled Hadji Bey's Real Genuine Turkish Delight (made in MacCutain Street, Cork, Ireland) which begs the question what is genuine and what is false better than Orson Welles managed in his film "F Is For Fake"

(Actually I may mean and be referring to O W Jeeves in his film "Vérités et mensonges"; we are, after all, dealing with degrees of truth and falsehood here.)

This is a question that has been much worrying the British Courts and the EU with a recent court decision about that fine English delicacy Melton Mowbray pork pies. which along with Cornish Pasties and Cheddar Cheese are made, it turns out, in a disused tyre factory in Akron, Ohio.

This is the Internet. None of it is true.

(but some of it is strange. Since writing the above I have discovered that Hadji Bey's Turkish Delight is still made in Cork, is no longer labelled Real Genuine but described as "Sultan's Choice - Harem Favourites". I am concerned now that I may have really offended the Sultan of Cork and the scantily clad inmates of his harem who are pictured on the boxes. The present company makes clear on its webpage that "The present company 'Hadji Bey Ltd' was formed in 2004. There is no connection between this company and any previous company of a similar name.")

Monday, January 02, 2006

The chap with the high end Canon told me that there had been a traffic jam of people with cameras in the Cathedral Close that morning at first light; all trying to photograph the place with virgin snow. The lad with the compact is his son. The woman in the background photographing her daughter was no relation to them (I think). They were part of a crowd of people with cameras (Myself included) jostling each other while attempting to photograph the kids sledging on St James' Hill.

This is not a new problem; at the last Lord Mayor's procession I was unable to see the fireworks properly because of the number of people holding their cameraphones high above their heads. They were not looking at the fireworks; they were looking at their photographs of the fireworks on their tiny mobile screens.

Was direct experience too much for them and they had to have it filtered through a screen in the same way that television filters reality every night?

Me! Me! Me!

I have never helped build a light railway across the Hindu Kesh.
I am not an optician nor again an orthodontist.
I was not the 'seventh man' in the Cambridge Spy circle.
I am not an ex lover of either Madonna or Camilla Parker-Bowles.
I have not at any time designed wheelchairs.
I have never discovered a new star or any other astronomical body.
I was NOT in Kabul in August 1957 or in Devises at any time in 1998.
The only grassy knoll I am familiar with is one in Wroxham that I used to mow.
The construction of hovercraft will forever be a closed book to me.
I am not, at present, a boy band.
I do not collect the names of Railway Stations.
No one has ever called me Buzz
I have never been the subject of an alien abduction.